The
list of child kidnappings-sexual assaults grows -- endlessly it seems.
The latest high-profile abduction is five-year-old Evelyn Miller of
Iowa. Eight-year-old Shasta Groene of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, has recently
been found -- after almost seven weeks of molestation, her brother
likely dead following long periods of abuse, and her parents bludgeoned
to death.

In
countless cases, the perpetrator has had a rap sheet as long as your
arm; yet, the culprit inexplicably is released to repeat his crimes.
Expecting a child rapist to register as a sex offender is about as
realistic as a field agent asking an illegal alien to show up for
a court hearing in 10 days. It “ain’t gonna happen.”

But
the patent illogic of liberal theology still reigns, in the face of
common sense. In the liberal worldview, sexual freedom has transformed
rape from the equivalent of torture to an unremarkable crime on the
order of petty theft (read, “nonconsensual sex”); all criminals
can be rehabilitated (i.e., “cured” with therapy); and the first duty
of government is to “understand” the root causes of delinquent behavior,
up to and including terrorism.

Such
a mind-set exemplifies what is wrong with instilling in schoolchildren
a liberal worldview without benefit of the alternatives. It illustrates
what is unethical about testing students on the degree to which they
have “internalized” (read: “mastered”) liberal worldviews and
rejected Judeo-Christian values.

Initially
sold as “value-neutral” education, ostensibly to avoid having teachers
injecting their own political and moral attitudes into a curriculum,
the transmission of “humanistic” ethics was anything but neutral --
or humane, for that matter. “Humanistic education” was the euphemism
given to the old “progressivism” of the 1930’s and 40’s.

The
term “humanism” eventually was absorbed into the American lexicon
in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. But humanistic education was liberal
dogma straight out of Karl Marx’s writings and psychology textbooks.
It was agnostic at best, atheistic at worst.

Conflict
resolution, nuclear-free (or drug-free) zones, peace studies, self-esteem
classes, collaborative learning, sex-drenched “health” curricula,
school psychologists as replacements academic counselors, mass mental
health screening: all these and more have been part and parcel of
an aggressive timetable aimed at assuring that America’s youngsters
grow up to be socialistic, left-leaning adults.

Closet
Communists got part of what they wanted. While an ego-centered “me-first”
mentality reigned on the economic front -- managing somehow to perpetuate
most aspects of a free economy -- this, too, is shifting as private
property rights are slowly eradicated, both by Supreme Court edict
and by individual, massive credit card debt, which transfers ownership
to lending organizations and to the government that insures them.
Future generations will find themselves progressively less able to
afford property, send their kids to private schools, or to purchase
things our grandparents took for granted. Those who do have money
-- particularly sports celebrities and entertainers -- will tend not
to care so much about schools or savings accounts. They will be more
inclined to spend, and lose, their money as fast as they earn it.

The
singer-superstar-sexpot, the one who insults Christians by using the
moniker “Madonna,” recently gave her 10-year-old daughter a credit
card with a purchasing cap that would stun most people. The purpose,
supposedly, was “to teach [the child] about the value of money.” Yet,
there she was, simultaneously plugging the liberal line at the Live
8 concert, reminding those considerable less monetarily endowed than
she or her daughter that they should spend their money on African
poverty despite the massive, albeit unproductive, aide American taxpayers
have already dumped into that country.

Thus
has liberalism bequeathed to a new generation crime on a scale inconceivable
to parents of the 1950’s; cultural chaos on a level unthinkable when
the now-grown officials who attend summits like G-8 were children;
and arbitrary controls that restrict all citizens’ basic rights.

Whereas
we should have been focusing on sensible, constitutional limits to
free speech in areas like pornography and violent rap lyrics, we now
find ourselves subject to censorship of religious references instead.
Whereas parents once worried about their children shoving in cafeteria
lines, chewing gum, and running in the school halls, now modern mothers
and fathers have to deal with drug addiction, bulimia and sexually
transmitted diseases. Whereas Americans once trusted that government,
for all its faults, would put protection of its citizens first, today
neighborhoods find career criminals running amok on their streets,
terrorists threatening to blow up restaurants and subways, and the
borders wide open, all the while, to those intent on taking unprecedented
advantage of American largesse, overwhelming emergency rooms, schools,
and social safety nets intended to benefit taxpaying citizens alone.

The
result is draconian controls on a law-abiding populace, which they
increasingly accept in the name of keeping order. It will get worse,
as the nation’s young people become accustomed to being tracked and
monitored, assessed and regimented, with scant memory as to the historical
roots of the Republic we once knew. Instead they are inundated with
the root “causes” of crime, which of course always boils down to more
money to fund the liberal agenda.

Will
the American electorate ever say “Enough!”? Maybe. Will it reject
liberalism and its close cousin, socialism? Doubtful. This will put
Americans on a collision course.

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The
liberal dogma is entrenched and has found respectability. Today’s
10-year-olds have no institutional memory of anything but an entitlement
society combined with increasing doses of surveillance. Unless something
completely unexpected happens, the American response to an inevitable
increase in crime and chaos will be to launch ever more radical control
measures.

Beverly Eakman is an Educator, 9 years: 1968-1974,
1979-1981. Specialties: English and Literature.

Science Editor, Technical Writer and Editor-in-Chief
of official newspaper, National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
1974-1979. Technical piece, "David, the Bubble Baby," picked up by popular
press and turned into a movie starring John Travolta.

Chief speech writer, National Council for Better
Education, 1984-1986; for the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Commission
on the Bicentennial of the US Constitution, 1986-1987; for the Voice of
America Director, 1987-1989; and for U.S. Department of Justice, Gerald
R. Regier, 1991-1993.

The result is draconian controls on a law-abiding populace, which they
increasingly accept in the name of keeping order. It will get worse, as
the nation’s young people become accustomed to being tracked and monitored,
assessed and regimented, with scant memory as to the historical roots
of the Republic we once knew.